Ep 18 Daily Practices for Connecting with Spirit & Torrontes

Maria Mayes: [00:00:00] Well, welcome back, friends. I'm so excited to share with you my guest today. I have with me Darcy Jean Brown. And Darcy's actually a spiritual guide and an empathetic guide in meditation. And she helps all ages, in fact, Discover the benefits of spiritual hygiene, which that's a new term. I'm going to add to my vocabulary after today's episode and has successfully worked with clients worldwide to learn their abilities to connect with their higher power and the universe.

And so, um, she's the creator of soul boost meditation. And this community provides techniques and tips to discover ways to receive messages and just strengthen their intuition, allowing them to discover their inner compass to bring clarity to navigate life. Now, I don't know about you, but I always am looking for more clarity to navigate this [00:01:00] crazy world.

So excited to get into it. So not only does Darcy provide a space for clients to gain clarity, but she's also an author of A Growing Soul Misdiagnosed, where she shares her experiences with being wrongly diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. And bipolar at that young age of 17 years old, only to discover years later, her spiritual abilities and how she was able to heal herself with meditation.

So, you know, I'm excited because anytime I get to connect with another meditation teacher, um, I just light up. So I'm super excited to have you here, Darcy. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Darci Brown: Well, thank you for having me. 

Maria Mayes: Yeah, so I love if there's anything that I left out in that beautiful bio, um, is there, please add if there's anything that I missed.

Darci Brown: No, I mean, that's in a nutshell a bit about my life. Yeah, I mean, I created soul boost five years ago, [00:02:00] roughly now. Um, I felt guided to start doing group meditations as well as private sessions online. Um, currently I do mostly only online, but I will go out and do guided meditations at events. Okay. But, uh, essentially, I just want people to understand the importance of being still and especially in this world that we're in right now, um, with our nervous systems being shot and just It's all the benefits that meditation can bring you.

Maria Mayes: I love that. I mean, if we look at just everything in our outer world is literally designed to take us outside of ourselves and not be still. So the fact that you're an advocate for the stillness, I love that. So tell us a little bit more about, um, soul boost and how you kind of, how you work with individuals and how you work with groups.

Darci Brown: So with groups, I kind of tailor it to. Meet the people where they are. So if there's a group, [00:03:00] there's always if you know, there's always a certain type of energy with each group. So I really kind of tailor it and customize it for that, that group in itself. So there might be group events where. I'm just guiding them in meditation, providing them the space to relax, drop in, clear their chakras, clear their energies, and be able to really start to understand just how they can calm their nervous systems.

So at one angle, I'll approach it, Hey, mental health, this is what we can do. And then for other groups, if they're more open and more inclined to spirituality. I will certainly then lead them and guide them into opportunities to hopefully connect to their guides, angels, past loved ones, whatever their belief system is.

I'm certainly not here to impose a belief system on anyone. I believe strongly that. You know, it's I think I've said it before that, you know, we're all seeing God or the universe through different [00:04:00] color lenses. And so however you see and meet him and or that in the universe or energy or your higher self, I'm open to all of that.

It's just a matter of really just understanding how we can create this space within ourselves. Being still and with our breath, so we can start to understand the essence of the fact that we are energetic beings and how do we clear that energy and how do we receive and how do we lighten ourselves up in that regard.

Maria Mayes: I love that. I love that because it really, you know, the world is heavy, we have to lighten up right and And I love that you're speaking to just the uniqueness and the inclusivity is the word that's coming to me in terms of, you know, all are welcome every different walk of faith, all just looking to help cultivate and pull out, um, whatever that that connection is for that individual within that group.

I love it. So, um, so I've got one question regarding, you know, Thank you. [00:05:00] Your, your book is intriguing and I definitely will put in the show notes how to get that and everything and people can go read it to learn your full journey, but just having been someone who also had a rediagnosis, if you will, after 40 years of my life.

How did that help you pivot into your purpose work that you're doing today?

Darci Brown: Um, you know, quite frankly, that I was so young. I'm 43 now. So that was quite a few years ago when I was initially diagnosed. And in my book, I discuss in detail and quite raw what I went through. Because of the traumas I had experienced at that age, a lot of what I was experiencing was PTSD, but that wasn't at the time what they understood it to be because I was also experiencing hearing voices and other things.

So in Western culture, they looked at that and they're like, well, you're, you're schizoaffective, you know? So I, I was put on medications and none of the medications [00:06:00] worked for me. Now, My background is I actually did later work in the E. R. and help and work with patients and mental health. I'm very passionate about mental health.

Um, I'm not here in full disclosure. I'm not here saying don't take medication. I'm not here saying to you what it should be for you. I can only speak on my own experience. And for my personal experience, the medications were not working for me. And because of that, I got off the medications. And thankfully, Because I had a support loving support system of family and friends, I was able to find my way through other modalities, such as working out and finding ways to eat healthy and understanding what I didn't know then that I now know I was already meditating because that was just something that wasn't discussed back then, not in our Western culture.

You know, now it's a little more trending and you're hearing it a bit more. But I look back and I was certainly [00:07:00] meditating and all those things combined allowed me to heal the PTSD without the medication. And it wasn't until as I mentioned, I started soul boost about five years ago. It would have been around that timeframe of six to seven that I had on a whim decided to go to a medium, which was something I feared because of my Western religious upbringing.

But basically She kind of opened Pandora's box, if you will, and saying, well, you do this. So it really kind of brought back those voices and fears of, do I want to go down this rabbit hole? Sure. Um, so it was, anytime you have your foundation pulled out from underneath you, it's a very tricky thing to learn how to rebuild on and and create a foundation out of nothing again.

Yeah. So that's essentially what the book is about is how did I multiple times was I able [00:08:00] to rebuild a foundation or what felt at the time is nothing. Um, so yeah, I mean, now it's It was what allowed me to dig into it more spiritually and not fear it to understand there for me. I call them spirit guides.

Um, but I, I'm also open to the idea that none of us really know, right? What I know is that I'm at peace with it. I feel comfortable calling it spirit guides. Um, I like to toy with the ideas of science too, which is like, hey, it's energy or it's consciousness or it's, you know, I think all of it in the same lane is true.

I mean, even though it's not the same lane to me, it is, you know, it's kind of the same for all different terms, right? 

Maria Mayes: Different language for the same, the same intention, basically. Yes. Yeah, I love that. So tell us a little bit more about how you work with clients or, or, or even just with us today offering a.

A way that we can [00:09:00] tap in or just, you know, what, how can we some takeaway that we can use after the show to just improve our well being? 

Darci Brown: Yes. I mean, again, it's always going to start with meditation. I mean, anyone close to me in my life knows, oh, Darcy's going to tell me to meditate. 

Maria Mayes: Sounds familiar. Yeah.

Darci Brown: Yes. I mean, it comes to me and you go, what do I do? I'm going to say, go meditate. Um. But no, I mean, there are, there are things we can do habit wise, you know, it's what I call the daily practice. I'm coming out with a workbook, an attempt to capture just that, like, hey, here's a step by step of how you can build these habits for yourself.

And it doesn't need to take that much time of your day. I, and I think, yeah. Whenever we start a new habit initially, it can feel a bit daunting or, Oh my gosh, I need to put so much energy and effort into this in [00:10:00] order to achieve this. And we kind of get in our head in a way of goal orientating that, Oh, we need to succeed.

We need to succeed. And then. If we don't match it that day and then we think I fail and it becomes this inner dialogue battle and war within yourself. So if anything, I start there with people. I say, do some basic foundations of. making sure you're walking outside. First thing in the morning, get outside, put your feet on the earth any way you can.

If you're surrounded by concrete, fine. Find a pot with some dirt, put your toes in it, you know, just connect with nature, practice gratitude and gratitude. I think sometimes we think of like the Thanksgiving table. If you have family traditions of just going around the table saying, I'm thankful for the family and thankful.

I'm saying feel it. Actually feel the gratitude instead of just saying it as, as if it's a [00:11:00] routine, you really want to feel the sunshine or feel the rain. You want to feel the environment around you and feel your body, feel everything that's surrounding you. And connect with it and feel and show it gratitude.

So because we're energetic beings, you know, the plants are vibrating off energy. Everything's vibrating energy and connecting with that and feeling that gratitude is, and it can take two to five minutes in your morning. So basic things like that, as well as starting the habit of observing your thoughts.

What is your inner dialogue telling you? being mindful of your thoughts, you know, choosing which ones you're going to give power to and which ones you're not understanding that not every thought we have is factual and true. Um, so learning to discern those things and just. Some basic foundations, like I said, walking, gratitude in the [00:12:00] morning, journaling, and meditating.

And meditating can be a lot of different forms for different people. I think sometimes, you know, they think, oh, I need to lay still or sit still. Some people say to me all the time, I meditate hiking. That's when I feel most connected. Or when I'm driving, you know. It's whatever gets you in that meditative state.

To allow you to connect with, as we call it, higher self, calming your nervous system, centrally getting yourself centered in an alignment.

Maria Mayes: I love that. So, um, I often get the question that, uh, of, you know, I'm not a good meditator because I can't sit still, just like I'm saying, or I can't stop the thoughts.

Well, if you had no thoughts at all, you'd probably not be human, but it's that tool to get beyond them, right? To not, um, get lost in them. So what do you recommend to, uh, new meditators that are, [00:13:00] Feeling challenged by the thoughts, you know, I know the style I teach we use the breath as the awareness or in some cases mantra depending on the style, but how do you help them come back to that space of, uh, inner stillness when the monkey mind is getting a little overactive?

Darci Brown: Yeah, I mean, yeah, for me starting out when I meditated, I mean, it was probably when I, when I understood what I was doing was meditating. Yeah. Right. When I, when, as I got older and I, you know, away from my teens, twenties, and I was busy in a job working nonstop. Not had horrible habits, you know, I decided, okay, I'm going to set my alarm on my lunch hour because I really didn't take a lunch hour.

I would work through it. And I said, I said to myself, I'm going to set my alarm and I'll go sit outside and set my alarm again for five minutes. And just close my eyes and just try to be still and try to do this thing, quote unquote, called meditation. Right. [00:14:00] And this is again, before some of these meditation apps had come out, like insight timer and calm and some of these others.

So I didn't, I didn't quite utilize those at those times. I was just trying to play music or just sit still and be quiet. The thing I found that most helped me because I was certainly somebody who couldn't sit still was I create, I thought back to a childhood memory that brought me a lot of peace and it was my grandmother, who she often when I was a child she would, I would see her laying on the floor of her bedroom in the sunlight, just like a cat.

And, you know, as a kid, when an adult gets at your level, you're so excited, so you just want to be right in their face talking to them. And I remember trying to talk and going, Oh my gosh, grandma, grandma, and her saying, Hey, we're gonna just be quiet. And so. Looking back at that experience, it was, it was meditative, you know, she would lay there like a cat in the sun and just [00:15:00] be quiet.

And so I started doing this with her. And so funny enough, when I set the alarm in my lunch hour and the craziness of my job and busy mind and not being able to be still, I was able to visualize her doing that and visualize myself as a child curling up with her and laying next to her in that sun. And suddenly I felt peace.

Maria Mayes: Oh, I feel peace just with that description. 

So beautiful . 

Darci Brown: So I would encourage somebody starting out if you can't get into, like I said, a lot of these apps are helpful now. They have a lot of great stuff out there. Um, but if you, you're not quite there yet, just think of a childhood memory that brought you so much joy and peace.

And sit still with that and allow yourself to feel those emotions again. 

Maria Mayes: I love that feeling into that memory of joyfulness and childhood. And I love that, you know, you started with five because, you know, for the listeners, I did not pay her to [00:16:00] say take five minutes, even though my business is called take five.

So, so, um, yeah, I'm always encouraging people to just. Start with five minutes, take five minutes, five breaths, five minutes, take five slow, deep breaths. So I love that. Oh, so amazing. So, um, in your work today with clients, is there anything that you see as kind of a common thread or theme or challenge for people right now in this time on the planet?

Darci Brown: I mean, across the board, it makes me sad. I almost get emotional talking about, but I see it so often people's nervous systems are just. Completely fried shot and fried. And, and so, and I get emotional about it, I think because I struggled at such a young age with that. And here I'm on the other side of it.

And I understand the journey of what it was for me to kind of, you know, work with it and deal with that. And I'm always, we're always working and healing. And we're always on that journey, but certainly the, the, the big drastic change of [00:17:00] that from what it was. And so when I, Okay. Go out, especially in cities are more concentrated areas and you see people's nervous systems that are completely fried and they're impatient and they're, you know, just they're overwhelmed and they're worn out and it just it just makes me sad.

So, um, I think that. is one of the biggest things that needs addressing for us to get any kind of forward movement with anything in this life, in this world, in this healing process. Um, because without that, you're just bouncing around and you're kind of putting out energy that isn't going to be, you know, helping other people and helping yourself.

You just, you know, so, and that hence why I'm an advocate for being still. 

Maria Mayes: Love that. Yeah. No, I, I, uh, Definitely got a little energy shower over here myself from, uh, when you brought that up because it's been [00:18:00] something I, uh, was challenged with at an early age due to a nervous system dysfunction, and then also, um, just seeing it within the world right now and with my clients.

So thank you so much for the work you do to help us get out of that state of just Unraveling, overwhelm, dysfunction and disorder and to that place of stillness. So I've got some more questions for you here shortly. We're going to transition the conversation into wine, but I'd love to know, um, for the folks that are listening, how can they get ahold of you to work with you to book an online session with you?

Darci Brown: Um, I have a website, soulboostmeditation. com, um, I'm actually working on another website to combine them, but yeah. That one is where you can find me and get information as to how to connect with me.

Maria Mayes: Beautiful, beautiful. We'll include all that goodness in the show notes. And now, I'm just wondering with all the, the work that you do with others, [00:19:00] um, One more question before we transition to wine.

All the, the energy that you offer up to help others. Reclaim their own and, uh, take care of their nervous system. Is there anything in addition to the meditation, the nutrition, the nature, any other little secret formula that you use as a healer to help take you back to stillness? 

Darci Brown: Um, I think you have to understand what allows you to create the habits that will lend themselves in a way that will keep you moving forward so that it becomes a lifestyle. So if that is, Hey, I'm gonna play this specific song and lay down in this specific. you know, room or chair and have this ritual [00:20:00] as a way to get me there to keep you.

So it becomes a lifestyle and it becomes such a habit. You don't have to think about it. Or is it when I go for my walks, I listen to podcasts that are very positive. And I think Listening to things while you're walking, or if you can while you're working, it's almost a way of brainwashing yourself, right?

It's getting yourself, it's rewiring, because essentially you need to rewire your brain. And so yes, all these different things, like you mentioned, the nature, the meditation, uh, being mindful of your thoughts, creating that mindful practice lends itself to that lifestyle. But in essence, what you're, you're essentially trying to do is you're rewiring your brain.

You're recreating these neuroplasticities and that takes time and patience and understanding that you can do this, but it requires you to make just [00:21:00] slight adjustments, noticing that inner dialogue. Listening to more positive things, um, and, and then creating all these habits around it, right? Like, I'm gonna turn the TV off at this hour, so I'm not, or watching the news, so I can give my nervous system a break.

Right. Um, I hear so often from people when I do notice them feeling wound tight, and I say to them, Seems like your nervous system's in overdrive. Why don't you do some breathing techniques or just take a step back and, and I understand it's almost like you fight it and you wanna push through, and that ego, maybe it's ego, maybe it's survival techniques, you know, just kicks in.

But we kind of wanna push to a point where either we break down and cry, or we're angry and causing harm to others, or harm to ourselves in the process. And whether that harm is slow growing or quick. To show it's gonna [00:22:00] happen if you're just pushing, pushing, pushing, and not giving yourself that moment to sit still.

So I don't know if I got off topic a little bit. 

Maria Mayes: No, it's perfect. It's, it's, it's really about rewiring your brain and then allowing these habits to become a lifestyle. So it becomes so effortlessly for you. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. That just rewiring the brain, befriending the nervous system and just coming back to self.

I love that. Thank you so much. So tell me what kind of wine do you like to mindfully sip? 

Darci Brown: Well, you know, I do enjoy wine so much. I studied it. I made it. I sold it. I loved it. Uh, I do drink mindfully because, and there's times where I haven't over the years, certainly, but, uh, I, as you get older and you do other things in life and you practice mindfulness, you realize, well, okay, you know, when to drink and when not to, but I did bring wine today because of the podcast.

Yeah. Um, I [00:23:00] don't have a Chardonnay, what I brought was a Finka, it's a South America, it's Torontes, which is a fun white wine. 

Maria Mayes: I love Torrontes. 

Darci Brown: Yeah, I discovered it when I was traveling in South America, I had never heard of that varietal fell in love with it. 

Maria Mayes: It's so beautiful. So, so tell me about it. Lots of floral on the nose.

Yeah. She's smelling her glass and I'm just gonna raise, I've got a soave here. I'm gonna raise my glass. and smell it because well and cheers yeah cheers this is the first for uh the podcast where we're actually doing a mindful taste um during recording so i love that actually um the little boutique winery that i uh teach at and pour at on the road to yosemite has a sister winery in Argentina so we actually serve a Torrontes that comes oh nice that comes from La Sult and it's you know once I tried it too I thought oh here's just this Explosion of beauty in a [00:24:00] glass, right?

That you don't find too often, so I love that. 

Darci Brown: Yeah, I was really excited about it when I came across it in South America. Um, I am going to read the description off the bottle to be accurate. It does say citrus zest, white flower, tropical white fruit, and I would say yes to all that. I do smell all that, but I will be pretty clean and light, right?

Yes. I enjoy. I'm not. I'll be honest. Like I only prefer dry Chardonnays. I can't do the buttery. Don't kill me for those who love their butter Chardonnay. There won't be a butter, uh, butter lovers, uh, uh, attack here at all. It's funny. I like all varietals of wine, but there's only been one buttery Chardonnay that I've had.

And I'm like, that's not terrible. 

Maria Mayes: Good. Good. Well, I love it. Well, um, as we sip here a second, um, D'Arcy and I, before we started record, I [00:25:00] asked her, you know, Usually at the end of these podcasts, I'll do a guided meditation, and I asked her if she'd be so kind as to guide us through a meditation, so, um, I will put, um, if you have the name of that wine that you're tasting too, I'll put that as well as the Torrontes from, uh, Fasi Estate Winery in the show notes, and it's a it's a really interesting varietal not grown too many places.

So we'll put links to those in the show notes. Definitely encourage folks to check it out. And then Darcy, if you're still game, let's, let's, yeah, let's do a little meditation and get a moment.[00:26:00]